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Jurnee Smollett-Bell got her start on one of the most enduring TV sitcoms, Full House, and has gone on to appear on some of the most beloved shows of the past 20 years, like Grey’s Anatomy, Friday Night Lights, Parenthood, and True Blood.

But working in television was actually not her career plan.

“When I was a kid, I did a lot, then I took a break because I wanted to focus on films,” Smollett-Bell told BuzzFeed News over lunch in Los Angeles in mid-March. “I did guest spots here and there, but I had a rule where I said, ‘No, I’m not doing television.’”

Save for her breakout film role in 1997’s Eve’s Bayou, Smollett-Bell said she struggled to find well-rounded female characters on the big screen. “It’s been about finding roles that weren’t set dressing, characters who weren’t just the girlfriend,” the 29-year-old actor said. “You don’t want to be the earpiece for his problems where you have to help push the plot forward and your identity is directly connected to your male counterpart’s storyline. You have no arc of your own and you’re really irrelevant.”

Smollett-Bell and Angela Rawna on Friday Night Lights.

Bill Records / NBC

So when a role on Season 4 of Friday Night Lights, NBC’s critically acclaimed and fan-adored football drama, came her way in 2009, Smollett-Bell couldn’t help but say yes. “It was just too good to pass up,” she said of Jess Merriweather, a headstrong student at East Dillon High who, in addition to caring for her siblings, ends up shadowing Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler).

“They’re just writing more complex women in television,” the actor said. “Yeah, [Jess] had the whole love triangle with Landry [Jesse Plemmons] and Vince [Michael B. Jordan], but I had a completely independent arc. I had brothers and a family and ambitions and wanted to become a coach. It was a challenge as an actress and it’s not every day that I read scripts where the roles for the female are complex.”

She stayed on Friday Night Lights until the series came to an end in 2011. And that was the first, but far from the last, time Smollett-Bell would join a popular show already in progress. In 2013, she began starring on HBO’s True Blood in Season 6 as Nicole Wright, a vampire defender, and that same year, she reunited with FNL executive producer Jason Katims for a memorable arc on Parenthood‘s fifth season as Heather Hall, Kristin Braverman’s (Monica Potter) mayoral campaign manager.

Smollett-Bell on Underground.

Skip Bolen / Sony Pictures Television

“It’s a bit of a recurring theme in my career,” she said with a laugh of jumping on the bandwagons of beloved series. “Hopefully, Underground can break that streak.”

Underground, which premiered on March 9 on WGN America to record ratings for the network, follows the men and women behind the Underground Railroad. Smollett-Bell stars as Rosalee, a …read more

Source:: Buzzfeed